CHAPTER XII
A GREAT BISHOP, HENRY OF BLOIS
Let us now praise famous men....
It was he that took thought for his people that they should not fall
And fortified the city against besieging.
Ecclesiasticus.
GREAT as has been the part played by kings in the history of our city, that played by bishops has been even greater still, and few among the makers of Winchester hold a more prominent or more honourable place than the great bishop who had succeeded to the see a few years before Henry I.’s death, Henry of Blois, brother of Stephen of Blois, now king of England, whose fortunes were to be closely linked during the two following reigns with those of our city.
A scheming statesman and an ardent churchman, he was to play a leading part in national affairs in the troublous times that were to follow—to direct his see for over forty years, and to leave indelible marks of his occupancy in the see and the city alike, of which St. Cross Hospital, Wolvesey ruins, the Cathedral font and portions of its fabric are but some of the most notable and most enduring.
And the times were troublous indeed. The White Ship tragedy had bereft not only the king of his heir, but the nation of a male claimant to the throne in the direct line, and all Henry’s influence was insufficient to secure the crown for his daughter Matilda, the widowed Empress of Germany. The feeling of the time was adverse to having a female as sovereign; and Stephen of Blois, Henry’s nephew, actively championed by Bishop Henry, and strongly supported by the barons, bore down all active opposition.
But king though he was, Stephen’s personal position was very different from that of his Norman predecessors. Brave and frank, but personally easy-going, dependent, moreover, on the goodwill of the powerful interests which had placed him on the throne, his authority was weak and his hold on his subjects ineffective. Barons and bishops strengthened themselves against him, and an era of castle-building commenced, which was to usher in a period of more terrible oppression than the country has ever witnessed before or since, for, secure in their strongholds, the Norman barons fastened themselves on the defenceless countryfolk like vultures on their prey, and there was none to make them relax their hold. As the Chronicle says:
They filled the land with castles and they cruelly oppressed the wretched folk with castle works. When the castles were made they filled them with devils and evil men. When took they the men who they thought any goods to have both by night and by day, churls and women, they cast them in prison for their gold and silver, and they tortured them with pains untellable—for never were any martyrs so tortured as they were. They hanged them up by the feet and smoked them with foul smoke—they hanged them by the thumbs or by the head and hanged fires upon their feet.... Many thousands they killed with hunger.... Then was corn dear and flesh, cheese and butter, for none there was in the land.... And they said openly that Christ slept and his saints.
Such was the anarchy, such the ruin, which weak rule had brought upon the realm.
Prominent among the castle-builders—though not among the oppressors—were certain of the bishops, and none more so than Bishop Henry. The bishop’s residence at Wolvesey, the ancient seat of Alfred and the Saxon kings, he converted into a strong Norman fortress, the ruins of which still stand, while at Merdon (near Hursley, some five miles from the city), at Bishop’s Waltham, and at Farnham, he reared fortresses also. Thus Winchester became remarkable in one respect—it had two fortress castles instead of one, a privilege it was later on to pay dearly for.
But Bishop Henry had other schemes too. Of royal birth, reared in the atmosphere of church ascendancy in the great and ambitious house of Cluny, and naturally masterful in temperament, he was aiming at higher rank and wider influence. Bishop of Winchester though he was, and Abbot of Glastonbury—for by special papal sanction he had been allowed to hold this valuable and influential office alike with his bishopric—there was still the archbishopric before him, and when in 1136 this fell vacant he seemed by every natural claim to be marked out for it; but Stephen had begun to feel his brother’s yoke growing heavy on him, and after some long delay Bishop Henry was passed by and Theobald, Abbot of Bec, appointed. Henry was deeply mortified; and though the Pope soon after appointed him as Papal Legate over Archbishop Theobald’s head, his wounded pride never forgot the affront it had received.
Disappointed of his hopes of Canterbury he worked hard to persuade the Pope to divide England into three provinces instead of two, with Winchester diocese as the third archbishopric; and though not actually successful in this, the Pope is said to have encouraged him in his project.
While matters were thus strained between the bishop and the king, Stephen, who had witnessed with alarm the growth of the castle-building and the power of the barons, determined to enforce his authority upon them. He called on several of the bishops to surrender their castles, and, being met by refusal, treated the Bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury with such cruelty and personal indignity that the latter died from the hardships inflicted on him. This act of unparalleled folly—for the person of a bishop was regarded as sacred—not only estranged public sympathy, but fanned to active flame the smouldering resentment of Bishop Henry. As Papal Legate he summoned Stephen to answer for his conduct before him at a council held at Winchester, and here the king was not only condemned, but even obliged to do penance. Stephen’s position was gravely compromised, and Matilda’s supporters, who had long bided their time, broke into active opposition. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, her half-brother, took up arms in her behalf; Matilda landed at Arundel; and Stephen in fighting at Lincoln was taken prisoner.
Such an event seemed a token from heaven. Bishop Henry openly espoused Matilda’s cause; he proclaimed her at Winchester as “Lady of the English.” The city opened its gates to her, and she marched in in triumphal procession with all her forces and took possession of the Castle, while the occasion was celebrated by a solemn service of rejoicing in the Cathedral.
But this state of things was not to last. Arrogant and impracticable, she quickly alienated her own supporters, and finding the bishop by no means subservient, as she had expected, she summoned him to yield up his Castle of Wolvesey to her, to which summons he is said to have enigmatically replied, “I will prepare myself,” and this he did. He repaired and strengthened his Castle and threw his influence again into the scale of Stephen. Thus civil war broke out once more, and for six years the country was torn again by every kind of evil and oppression. In these troubles Winchester, placed, as it were, between anvil and hammer, with the empress-queen in the Castle and the bishop at Wolvesey, suffered terribly. Raid and counter-raid, siege and counter-siege succeeded one another, till almost the whole city—houses, churches, monasteries alike—were consumed in the flames. Alswitha’s foundation, Nunna Mynstre, or St. Mary’s Abbey, parish churches, domestic buildings, all alike perished. Far and wide the flames spread—even the new building of Hyde Abbey, only erected some thirty-one years, was involved in the general conflagration. The Cathedral and St. Swithun’s Priory alone escaped, and that, it is said, because Robert of Gloucester generously forbore reprisals.
One of the few remaining links with the conventual buildings of St. Swithun’s Priory, which among the Benedictines were always placed on the south side of the minster. Formerly it was the quarters of the Prior of St. Swithun’s. Philip of Spain was lodged here when he came to Winchester to marry Queen Mary of England.
But the empress’s cause was a declining one, and though David, king of Scotland, and Robert of Gloucester stoutly attacked Wolvesey, it held out till relieved by Queen Matilda in person, and it was now the empress’s turn to suffer siege in the Castle. Various accounts are given of what occurred; in one it is stated[2] that, being straitened for provisions, she escaped by feigning herself dead, and was carried out in a coffin. Be this as it may, her forces were routed—she fled, and both Robert of Gloucester and King David were taken prisoners. Finally, the war exhausted itself. The land was ruined, impoverished—nothing seemed left to strive for. Peace was made on terms of compromise, and King Stephen, restored to the throne, entered Winchester with the empress’s son, Prince Henry, who was acknowledged as his heir. Stephen died soon after, and Henry II. became king.
And now matters went badly for Bishop Henry. Henry the king was determined to bring the castle-builders to book, and Henry the bishop was a foremost offender, and in addition he had to defend himself from charges brought against him by the monks of Hyde.
In marked contrast with his behaviour elsewhere, Bishop Henry had acted oppressively against them, and when their abbey was destroyed he had even forced from them the ashes to which it had been reduced. No slight treasure the latter, for did they not contain the molten remains of cross and shrine and chalice, the cross of Cnut and Emma, their great prize and possession, and many another treasure, which though now but molten metal, still reckoned a value in thousands of pounds? Fortune was against the bishop, and he found it convenient to retire abroad, to Cluny and elsewhere, for a time, while the new king established his authority, made order in the distracted kingdom, and razed the offending fortresses to the ground. Thus while the bishop’s palace at Wolvesey still remained, the Norman keep was dismantled and rendered harmless, and some of these ruins we can see there to-day.
The succeeding years were to present Bishop Henry in a less ambitious and altogether more attractive light. He had played for his great stake—played and lost: his legatine commission had expired, his archiepiscopal dream had rudely disappeared. His political power shattered, and his personal influence largely compromised, he was glad to make peace with the king and full restitution to the monks of Hyde, and he returned to his see to spend the last portion of his life—some fifteen or sixteen years—in acts of quiet episcopal rule and active beneficence. During his stay on the Continent he had amassed many treasures of art, and these he brought back with him—very probably the wonderful and curious black stone font, one of a rare series of seven English fonts, four of which are in our own county and diocese, was placed by him in the Cathedral at this time. But a far nobler and more noticeable monument he was already rearing for himself in the outskirts of the city. Some mile down the valley, in the little village then known as Sperkforde, he had, in the early days of Stephen’s reign, commenced to build a hospital or almshouse—the Hospital of St. Cross—and to this he now devoted himself.
Filled as the land then was with misery and ruin, relief of the hungry and distressed was a peculiarly pressing need, and the bishop’s aim was to relieve distress. Following the hospitable example of the great Clugniac house in which he had been reared, the gates of St. Cross were to be ever open, ready to give kindly welcome to all who should enter there in want. Thirteen aged brethren were to be maintained in ease and comfort. One hundred of the poor of Winchester were to be regularly fed there in the “Hundred Mennes Hall,” and seven poor Grammar School boys of Winchester—for Winchester had its Grammar School then, earlier even than the College of Wykeham—were likewise to be fed and provided for daily. In 1157 Bishop Henry committed the guardianship of his hospital to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, the Knights Hospitallers as they were called, whose special care was to aid wandering men, particularly the poor pilgrims visiting the Holy Sepulchre. And so the brethren of St. Cross wear the black gown and the eight-pointed silver cross of the Knights of St. John to this day.
St. Cross is Bishop Henry’s great memorial. He lived to see it firmly established, but otherwise in his later years he took but little part in public affairs. One of his last acts was to receive his cousin, the repentant King Henry, after the murder of à Becket, when he bade him welcome him with affectionate admonition and gave him his blessing. He died in 1171 and was buried in the Cathedral; the tomb popularly designated William Rufus’s Tomb has been thought to be his. Great and high-minded as a churchman, he had lived through the period of personal striving—“the fever, and the watching, and the pain” of self-advancement and of worldly ambition. His selfish schemes had died and nobler ones had succeeded, which revealed the man at his greatest and his best. Truly it might be said of him—
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
And St. Cross, at whose gates the needy wayfarer still receives hospitable welcome as he did in Bishop Henry’s day, flourishes still, exercising a far wider measure of beneficence and power for good than its founder, in all probability, anticipated or even dreamed.
